The Wave Sucks (Funniest Article I’ve Read in a While)

I was at the stadium on Saturday sitting in bleacher section 51 in left center when I noticed a curious phenomenon occurring all around me. The Yankees had just scored two runs in the bottom of the 8th inning to bring the score to within three runs, I was feeling pretty happy it being a beautiful day and a decently close ball game, and all of a sudden everyone around me starts intermittently standing up and sitting back down. It took me a while to search through my memory banks to figure out just what this puzzling occurrence was and why at such an integral part of the game these people decided to do leg exercises. Then as clear as spermicidal lubricant the memory came to me. On a cold day in Giant’s Stadium when I was very young a strange cultural practice known as “The Wave” spread like the AIDS virus in Africa throughout the stadium. I participated at the time because, hey, I was a kid and it seemed like fun. I quickly realized my mistake, when an overwhelming sense of shame gathered in the pit of my stomach. It would be much later in life when I realized that this is the feeling that keeps humans from doing things like running naked through the streets or rooting for the Red Sox or doing the Wave at a baseball game. The guys over at Drunk Jays Blog wrote a very funny guide to doing the wave (if you must). It is hilarious and I suggest you check it out. I will certainly be sitting in the right field bleachers next time, or as I like to call it: The land where the Wave goes to die.

Run Differential

Just did a quick calculation of our run differential after week 1, we have been outscored by 11 runs 28-17. If you use the sabermetric value of runs (10 runs = 1 win) we should be a game under .500. Although, take Latroy Hawkins and Ian Kennedy out of the picture and we are tied at 17-17, which would be make us exactly at .500. Unfortunately we can’t do that, Ian Kennedy and Latroy Hawkins are both big reasons why we lost game 1 against the Rays. Fortunately, we have gotten some lucky breaks. My mind immediately goes to some defensive miscues by the Blue Jays. The scary thing is we are a couple good plays from being 1-5 or 0-6 or something like that. We will not continue to get breaks like this all season, hopefully sometime soon our offense will wake up so we can take some pressure off of our highly inconsistent starters. To digress a bit the staff has gone from good to bad every other day (Wang 7.0IP 2ER, Moose 5.2IP 5R 3ER, Franchise 6IP 2ER, Kennedy 2.2IP 6ER, Pettitte 5IP 5R 3ER, Wang 7IP 0ER). Let’s hope Wang continues to be the man and the performances of Kennedy and Pettitte improve about to where Phil Hughes was in his first start. If that can happen and the offense starts doing what it gets paid a heck of a lot to do, we will be good. If it can’t this could be get really, really ugly. On a side note, the AL East is going to be very interesting this year. The Rays and Jays are legit and aren’t going down without some serious fight. That said, couldn’t be happier that there’s baseball in my life again. Will be posting again soon. Until then let’s go Yanks!